Are you learning New Testament Greek with Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek? Here's where you can meet other learners using this textbook. Use this board to ask questions and post your work for feedback. Use this forum too to discuss all things Koine, LXX & New Testament Greek including grammar, syntax, textbook talk and more.

I am starting to study Koine Greek on my own. And when I found this web site my heart jumped for joy. And then it all most stoped when I seen how little activity Koine Greek And Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek had. I wonder why there is so little activity here? I know that I would post here as I move along in my studies. I know the biggest challenge for me is time.

Kopio wrote:For one thing....the forums have been pretty quiet on whole lately.

Post your questions here though, we'd love to interact with them. You'll most definitely get replies. Unless of course you ask about Jn 1:1, no one is ever interested in discussing that

lol

rather, maybe we should ban discussion on that...

I know what you mean but I wouldn't ban an honest discussion but banning the pretense of discussing it while in actual fact all that is done is cut and paste large sections from websites that "agree with you", would be a good idea. All that does is beating someone on the head with someone else's club.

Don't be discouraged if the postings are infrequent. Some use other books to study New Testament Koine Greek instead of Mounce's book which would explain the lack of postings. Two others and I are going through Machen's New Testament Greek for Beginners at the moment. We are in Lesson 19 covering aorist participles. You can find us at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Machen/. You are not alone.

I write in Greek so as to review the Greek I had already learned as well as trial and error with the challenge of writing something new. If you see a mistake, please tell me so I can be a better student of the language.

IreneY wrote:Oh yes do ask! I mean I have even bookmarked the Greek Orthodox Church's site with all the Bible texts on line and I haven't used it like for ever You ask, we de-lurk and answer

That suggests a question for me to post: could you please post a link to that website? (I'm especially curious to learn about the Church's cantillation of biblical readings, and what connection it has to the ancient pitch accents, given some remarks made in other threads...I suppose it might even be good to pop into my local Greek church on a Sunday morning, assuming I can think of something better to say than "I just wanted to see how well you spoke and sang Greek"!)

Keep in mind that quite a few texts in there are in modern Greek as far as I remember. Mind you, if you want to hear some chanting I can give you other ecclesiastical links (I think the Greek Orthodox Church of the USA has some midis). It'd be better than poopping into your local Greek church since some priests and cantors(?) just make my ears automatically shut down and my miniscule musice node roar in frustration and I remember hearing the priest on my brother's wedding and wincing in perfect unison with my mother and a few others over the mistakes he made in Koine Greek.

IreneY wrote: It'd be better than poopping into your local Greek church since some priests and cantors(?) just make my ears automatically shut down

Irene, sometimes you apologize for mistakes you say you make in your English. Your mistakes are precious few but this time your mistake is precious. Maybe it is just a matter of your finger stuttering, I don't know. My guess is if you went into your local church and pooped (unless it was in a designated place) the priests and cantors are likely going to have a sh*t-fit.

P.s: This is the first time in all my posts that I had one of my words censored.

Last edited by Bert on Fri Feb 01, 2008 12:14 am, edited 2 times in total.

The reason this forum does not get as much traffic as some others is because many relevant to this forum end up being posted in the general "Learning Greek" forum: I am currently studying Homer and the Gospels, but any questions I have on those subjects I tend to post on the general forum simply because I believe it will get more views that way.

Greetings I thank you for the funny : ) Great!!! I just joined two nights ago, and am new at this thing, or this type of forum...My English is normally full of bad habits, not the four letter type, just ellipses and exclamation points all over the place. The bad habits might drop a little as I see everyone's good, inspiring me to better prose and so on. Your mentioning popping into a local church to hear the Greek has often been a goal of mine, but their hours are totally wrong for my other commitments : ) So, I think your on line links might be of need here. If I could find more and book mark them I think that will help me tremendously. I personally have not chose a book to study from yet, I have always checked things out of the library, and downloaded a few things here and there. I just downloaded all the books I could find on this site. (My thanks to the powers that be) And am looking them over. My main problem is lack of discipline, and while I have been interested in the subject for years, I still consider myself as a kindergartner. : ) So, if you or someone else reading this post knows of others just starting out, and they carry a big club with them, then send me in that direction, and maybe I'll graduate to first grade : ) Think this is my third post, so if my tagging this thread was not the best way to get started, then let me know, as I can be slow at times : ) The reason I did jump in was the idea of getting local tutoring, but now I think that might not be the best way anyways : ) Thanks for the insight : ) Cheers Bill

Hey there! I just noticed I followed "pooped" with an "I don't wanted" Honestly, sometimes I'm amazed by the things I come up with!

Now for the links: Greeks use modern Greek pronunciation for ancient Greek. That goes for the Byzantine hymns and psalms too obviously .Granted, the pronunciation during Biblical times was closer to modern Greek than classical but that doesn't mean that all students (and teachers/professors) prefer the "appropriate" reconstructed pronunciation to begin with and very few outside Greece (and Cyprus obviously) go for modern Greek.That said, you can start by checking youtube. Here's a link for Psalm 144. You can see many others under "related links". If you are interested in these I can find some more (I've moved to the US since I posted the previous messages and silly me didn't think of making an attachment out of my bookmarks or something so I don't have them anymore If not all's good

Thank you for the link... If I had a little less peanut butter in my ears I might understand a bit more then I did : )That is very interesting, and I believe I am going to book mark it to go back to it a couple of times : )I might understand a bit more the next time around.

Yes, if you find the links for more of this great, but please do not go too far out of your way, as I learn more Iwould hope to be able to recognise the differences between Modern and classic Greek. I checked a modern tape system out of the library and brought it back very shortly thereafter, remembering the alphabet was even different, and figured this is/was not my goal, so went to find some Koine Greek to start my studies : )

One quick question tho: Is the grammar pretty much the same in the three, Modern, Koine and Classic???

I just thought of a second question and that is: Is this thread going to go somewhere : ) I went to another site, but that group is about done with thier goals, reflector on the textkit site seems to be going strong, but if you know of a group that is just starting out I would love a push in the right direction : ) If you guys are about ready to pack it up, I don't want to start something, or ask too many questions : ) Thanks again Bill

Hi, how is your studies going, using Basics of Biblical Greek? I am also considering using this material to brush up my Greek and teach my daughter. How do you find the books? Which of the Mounce resources are you using?

IreneY wrote:Granted, the pronunciation during Biblical times was closer to modern Greek than classical but that doesn't mean that all students (and teachers/professors) prefer the "appropriate" reconstructed pronunciation to begin with and very few outside Greece (and Cyprus obviously) go for modern Greek.

I don't think I'm supposed to post links yet, but I wonder if the tide may not be turning regarding pronunciation. In addition to Chrys Caragounis' well done (I thought) book a few years back, there's a fellow named Randall Buth who produces Greek learning materials with a reconstructed Koine pronunciation scheme that is very similar to Modern Greek. It will be interesting to see how students in the West are pronouncing Greek in 20 years...

My sense is that you may be correct. I am an Erasmian, but there is a real on-line presence of those who do NT Greek with a Modern Accent. Where we will be in 20 years is harder to say. Anyone who is serious about Greek must learn to use several different accents, in order to take advantage of all the resources available.

ερρωσο.

I am writing in Ancient Greek not because I know Greek well, but because I hope that it will improve my fluency in reading. I got the idea for this from Adrianus over on the Latin forum here at Textkit.

I used Mounce's BBG for self-study and found his method of teaching to be very easy to follow and it got me reading and translating at a decent level of proficiency by the time I was done with the text and the workbooks.

Now, however, I am trying to go deeper into Greek and really understand it. I have found that Mounce has sacrificed some important information for the sake of easy learning. For example, I have realized that I can hardly form a sentence in Greek on my own! (We've been having a discussion about this over on B-Greek as well, so sorry about the redundant comments!) I have been going through the First Greek Writer in the Textkit library, and I am having to cover a lot of ground that I feel I should have learned right off the bat in introductory grammar.

So, Mounce is a bit of a trade off. You gain early reading comprehension but perhaps sacrifice a true understanding of how the language works. Mounce is very upfront about this in the Rationale section of his introduction to the textbook. I am beginning to think I may have to go back and work through an older (or at least different) grammar to fill in the gaps. Maybe Croy as was suggested over on B-Greek.

refe wrote:I used Mounce's BBG for self-study and found his method of teaching to be very easy to follow and it got me reading and translating at a decent level of proficiency by the time I was done with the text and the workbooks.

Now, however, I am trying to go deeper into Greek and really understand it. I have found that Mounce has sacrificed some important information for the sake of easy learning. For example, I have realized that I can hardly form a sentence in Greek on my own! (We've been having a discussion about this over on B-Greek as well, so sorry about the redundant comments!) I have been going through the First Greek Writer in the Textkit library, and I am having to cover a lot of ground that I feel I should have learned right off the bat in introductory grammar.

So, Mounce is a bit of a trade off. You gain early reading comprehension but perhaps sacrifice a true understanding of how the language works. Mounce is very upfront about this in the Rationale section of his introduction to the textbook. I am beginning to think I may have to go back and work through an older (or at least different) grammar to fill in the gaps. Maybe Croy as was suggested over on B-Greek.

Anyway, just my two cents!

Refe

I second this! We used Mounce in bible college for our first year, and second year we started text translation and used Metzger's vocabulary aids. All of our work in three years of Koine study was Greek to English. It was only last year (nearly ten years after my last college-level Greek course) that I started working with a group on Athenaze, which has English to Greek translations. I was completely unprepared!

I still feel like a toddler when writing in Greek, but it's getting easier. I mean, the writing is getting easier, but the level of grammar is getting more difficult. We're in chapter 15 of Athenaze level one (there are 16 total chapters in that level). When we finish, we'll be moving on to level two. It's been a blast working on Attic. I just hope that I get to a decent level of proficiency.

I just started reading/translating the Apology. My scheme is to:

(1) Sit and invest time in translating a section, marking unfamiliar vocab and unknown forms, looking them up in Diogenes, making notes about them and understanding them, translating it all into English;

(2) Rereading the sections up to that point throughout the week, practicing reading and comprehension without the English translation, becoming comfortable with the text as it is;

(3) Moving on to the next section and reading all of the previous sections again before breaking it down.

I want to read through the Apology so many times in the process of this work that at the end I'll be comfortable with it and have no problem at all with the Greek.

I know that the Apology is supposed to be easy (though, I don't feel that at all), but I think this type of work will pay off greatly. I want to be able to pull vocab from that text and use it in my own compositions. Eventually I'll be a good Greek student, despite the weaknesses that Mounce gave me (as well as the teacher who led our studies in Bible college - who I thought was amazing at the time, but with whom I'm now seriously disappointed).